Futility Closet - 242-The Cardiff Giant

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from Martian chess to a perpetual ladder. This is episode 242. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1869, two well diggers in Cardiff, New York unearthed an enormous figure made of stone. More than 600,000 people flocked to see the mysterious giant, but even as its fame grew, its real origins were coming to

Starting point is 00:00:39 light. In today's show, we'll tell the story of the Cardiff Giant, one of the greatest hoaxes of the 19th century. We'll also ponder the effects of pink and puzzle over a potentially painful treatment. And just a quick programming note, we'll be off next week, so we'll be back with a new episode on April 8th. So we'll be back with a new episode on April 8th. On the morning of October 16th, 1869, two workers set out to dig a well for a farmer named Stubb Newell in Cardiff, a tiny hamlet in the central part of New York State. For the first three hours, the job was unremarkable, but at around 11 o'clock, they hit a solid object about two and a half feet under the surface. As they uncovered it, they were astonished to find it was an enormous human foot, two feet long and made of stone. Gradually they uncovered the shape of a

Starting point is 00:01:30 huge stone man, like a petrified giant. If it had once been alive, it had stood more than ten feet tall. It lay twisted in the hole as if it had died in great agony, but its expression was serene. Its surface was bluish gray, and it gave the impression of enormous age. The news flashed through the county. Everyone agreed that the thing must be very old, whatever it was. No one was particularly impressed at the thought of a giant. The book of Genesis said that those had once lived in the earth, and even local history said that oversized skulls and bones had been found in the area. Whatever it was, everyone agreed that it belonged to Stubb Newell, and already he was getting offers for it. The highest was $17,000, four times the value of his property. For now, he turned them down. Visitors kept appearing throughout the day,

Starting point is 00:02:14 but at last he was left alone with the giant, and he kept a vigil by its side all night. The next day brought visitors from as far away as Syracuse, 14 miles away. Four doctors declared that the figure was a petrified man, but a local lecturer insisted it was a statue, probably made by French Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century. This was an odd time for this to be happening. After the Civil War, Americans in general shared a sense of openness to progress, and in particular the natural sciences, but they had no idea what sources to place their faith in, so they might equally rely on a circus as an encyclopedia. So you could find an authority to support any theory you happen to come up with.

Starting point is 00:02:55 People believed that the figure was a petrified giant from the Bible, a founder of the country, a statue made by a Viking or a Phoenician, or the remnant of some lost American race. And I guess they just didn't have the tools yet to be able to do the testing to determine between those hypotheses. Yeah, so you just, I guess one guess at this point was as good as another. Whatever it was, by the third day it was on the local pages of the three daily newspapers in Syracuse, and Stubb Newell had begun to charge admission. In half a day he made $200, or roughly $4,000 today, and he hired a teenage neighbor to stand guard over the statue that night. The crowds grew larger every day. One early visitor was Andrew

Starting point is 00:03:35 White, who'd been the first president of Cornell University. He wrote that on his journey down from Syracuse, quote, the roads were crowded with buggies, carriages, and even omnibuses from the city, and with lumber wagons from the farms, all laden with passengers. When White reached the farm, he found that food and drink vendors had already set up shop on the site. He wrote, in the midst was a tent, and a crowd was pressing for admission. Entering, we saw a large pit or grave, and at the bottom of it, perhaps five feet below the surface, an enormous figure, apparently of Onondaga gray limestone. It was a stone giant with massive features, the whole body nude, the limbs contracted as if in agony. Lying in its grave, with the subdued light from the roof of the tent falling upon it, and with the limbs contorted as if in a death struggle, it produced

Starting point is 00:04:20 a most weird effect. An air of great solemnity pervaded the place. Visitors hardly spoke above a whisper. The common response to the giant seems to have been reverence. One reporter wrote, as one looked upon it, he could not help feeling that he was in the presence of a great and superior being. The crowd as they gathered round it seemed almost spellbound. There was no levity. One person who would have felt tremendous levity was George Hull, a small-time swindler who lived in Binghamton, 60 miles to the south. Hull had been visiting Ackley, Iowa in 1866 when he got into an argument with a Methodist preacher who insisted that the biblical reference to giants was literally true. Hull, an atheist, thought that was nonsense. They argued until midnight, and Hull later wrote,

Starting point is 00:05:00 I lay wide awake wondering why people would believe those remarkable stories in the Bible about giants, when suddenly I thought of making a stone giant and passing it off as a petrified man. He must have been a very zealous atheist because he worked on the project for two and a half years, passing through at least four states and spending thousands of dollars. With some carefully chosen partners, he had arranged to quarry a five-ton block of gypsum in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and convey it to Chicago, where two sculptors carved it into human form. The figure had had hair at first, but Hull talked to a local geologist and learned that hair doesn't fossilize, so he had them remove it. To

Starting point is 00:05:35 make it look older, they poured a gallon of English writing ink over it. When that proved too dark, they followed it with sulfuric acid, giving the surface a gray tinge. When it was finished, they shipped it to Broome County, New York. The freight agent registered its weight as 3,720 pounds, and Hull chose Onondaga County for its resting place, both because that was the site of some earlier archaeological finds, and because he had a relation there named Stubb Newell. They buried the giant on Newell's farm and made him a fourth partner. It lay there for 11 months before Hull signaled Newell that it was time for the giant to be found. Hull had invested $3,000 in getting this far, about $60,000 today, so he needed the sensation to be big. So he must have been pleased to see the giant become national news within days of its discovery.

Starting point is 00:06:21 In the first week, roughly 1,500 people viewed it, including one man who had traveled nearly 300 miles from York, Pennsylvania, and Newell and his partners made $1,200, about $25,000 today. The following week, Hull himself visited the farm, feigning ignorance of the whole affair. Stubb Newell was still getting offers from investors who wanted to buy the giant. Hull told him to hold out for $30,000 for a three-fourths interest, and Newell was able to get that, about $600,000 today, a huge windfall and about 10 times the value of Newell's whole farm. The exhibit was now drawing curiosity seekers and newspaper correspondents from throughout the Northeast. The exhibitors installed a larger tent and published a booklet that sold 10,000

Starting point is 00:07:00 copies in its first edition. People were still arguing over whether it was a petrified giant or a statue, but a note of skepticism had begun to creep in as well. Andrew White, whom I quoted earlier, had decided that the whole matter was undoubtedly a hoax. For one thing, he said, the giant's material seemed foreign. Onondaga gray limestone is hard and substantial, but water had worn grooves in the underside of the giant. But White despaired of dissuading the believers. He wrote, as a refrain to every argument, there seemed to run jeering and sneering through my brain, Schiller's famous line, against stupidity the gods are powerless. There seemed no possibility even of suspending the judgment of the great majority who saw the statue.

Starting point is 00:07:39 And he added, there was evidently a joy in believing in the marvel, and this was increased by the peculiarly American superstition that the believe we get to decide the truth by a majority also. Still, suspicions were spreading among other skeptically-minded onlookers. Why had Newell needed a second well when he already had a first and had only two cows and a horse to tend to? People remembered that a year earlier, George Hull had been seen visiting Newell's farm and had remained there late at night. And at about the same time, a mysterious man with an iron-bound box had been seen making his way toward Cardiff. And now Stubb Newell raised eyebrows at the bank by requesting $9,400 in cash. When the teller said they didn't keep those amounts on the

Starting point is 00:08:30 premises, Newell agreed to a bank transfer and gave George Hulls information. Hull was badly in debt and needed the money. At these signs of trickery, the investors who had bought shares in the giant were growing angry, so Newell made them a promise. He said that if they could prove within three months that the giant was a fraud, he'd refund all their money. The newspapers praised this as the gesture of an honest man, and everyone who'd witnessed the discovery of the giant signed affidavits swearing to the truth of their story. Newell's affidavit was a lie, of course. It said that he'd known nothing about the giant until it was discovered. So now, in order to hold onto their profits, the conspirators would have to keep America believing in the hoax through January 24,

Starting point is 00:09:08 1870, when the three months were up. Satisfied for the moment, the new owners planned to take the giant on a tour of northeastern cities, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, and then head west to New Orleans, Chicago, and San Francisco. Perhaps eventually, they'd even visit Europe and the Far East. The first stop, though, was Syracuse, the closest city to Cardiff and the county seat. On November 5th, the giant was carefully removed from its grave and wheeled into Syracuse to the strains of a marching band. The exhibit there was a huge success, though the debate continued to rage as to the giant's origins. After six weeks in Onondaga County, the giant had attracted about 60,000 paying customers, and the new owners had recouped their investment. But even as they prepared for Albany and looked beyond it to

Starting point is 00:09:48 New York City, the case against the giant was growing stronger. Skeptics had been tracing George Hull's movements through Iowa and New York, and scientists had begun to scrutinize the giant's makeup. A 24-year-old mining engineer named Phil Moore Smith wrote to The Courier and Journal pointing out that the statue was made of gypsum, not limestone, and couldn't have withstood the conditions on Newell's farm for more than a year or two. One man had recovered a fragment of the giant from its burial place and found that one day of running water had dissolved more than a third of the sample, and a sculptor declared that the giant's body bore clear marks of modern tools. While the evidence was mounting against them, Hull and his partners refused to make any confession, still hoping to live out their three-month guarantee.

Starting point is 00:10:26 But Hull had also begun to lay the groundwork for a tell-all book that he could sell when the truth came to light. He never expected to just get away with this scot-free forever and convince people that there was really a giant. So he was going to profit even if the hoax came to light. He's going to profit either way. It's kind of hard to see what he was thinking. He'd invested so much time in setting this up and just expected to be caught. I guess that's just how, you know, some people in those days thought, because these hoaxes were rampant in this period. Well, he originally

Starting point is 00:10:53 started it, you'd said, to prove to the... Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's true. To prove that people would be credulous about such a thing, even if it was a falsehood. You have to reveal it in order to make that point, you're right. That's true. At this point, there's a little cameo from a figure we've met before.

Starting point is 00:11:10 On November 23rd, Othniel Charles Marsh, one of the warring paleontologists from our episode 217 about the Bone Wars, passed through Syracuse on his way to Rochester, and he examined the giant while it was still on display there. Marsh was a native of western New York and knew its geological features, and he declared that the giant was a fake. He cited the same evidence that others had already raised. Tool marks were still visible on the statue's surface, and gypsum is highly soluble in water, so the statue couldn't be very old. He wrote, altogether the work is well calculated to impose upon the general public, but I am surprised that any scientific observer should

Starting point is 00:11:44 not have at once detected the unmistakable evidence against its antiquity. He said the giant was, quote, a very recent origin and a most decided humbug. And that phrase was echoed in newspapers around the country. At the same time, word of all this was reaching Iowa, and the residents of Fort Dodge thought the description of the statue's composition sounded a lot like their native gypsum. And they remembered the two men who had visited their quarries in the summer of 1868. A village lawyer happened to be planning to visit relatives in Onondaga County, and while he was there, he went to see the giant. He later recalled,

Starting point is 00:12:15 It made me scream outright. They have hardly cut the corners off of this Fort Dodger enough to disguise the block since I saw it. How intelligent people can be so humbugged as they appear to be, I cannot conceive. Skeptics also tracked down records of the conspirators' visits in town and uncovered the purchase of the block of gypsum, its shipment to Chicago, and their meeting with two men there. Amid the rising allegations, the debate as to whether the giant was a petrified man or a statue generally went quiet. By the middle of December, the giant was becoming a joke. At this point, somehow

Starting point is 00:12:45 inevitably, P.T. Barnum entered the picture. He had visited the exhibition in Syracuse on November 24th and offered the owners $50,000 for a quarter share in the giant. When they turned him down, Barnum bought a replica from a local sculptor and exhibited that, allowing the public and the media to think it was the real thing. Barnum later claimed that this was a virtuous act. He said he'd become convinced that the original statue was a fake and had set out to punish the hoaxers by presenting an imitation. But it seems just as likely that he saw a popular sensation and wanted a part of it. I have mixed feelings about P.T. Barnum,

Starting point is 00:13:17 because he was so shameless we're taught to admire his audacity. He had no scruples. It's not admirable to just exploit people's gullibility. Right, yeah. The owners of the original giant sought an injunction to stop Barnum from exhibiting his duplicate giant, but the judge rolled his eyes at the whole fiasco. He said, bring your giant here, and if he swears to his own genuineness as a bona fide petrifaction, you shall have the injunction you ask for. In other words, you can't complain to the law for someone faking your fake. The tour pressed on.

Starting point is 00:13:47 By January 22nd, it had arrived in Boston, where, according to some accounts, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes both viewed it. But on February 10th, the two sculptors who had carved the giant published a joint letter in the Chicago Daily Tribune admitting their role in the affair. They wrote, We, the undersigned, desire, through the medium of your columns, to state to the public that we are the makers of the so-called Cardiff Giant. Evidently, Hull had never paid them in full. In the face of all these revelations, public interest began to wane. From Boston, the tour

Starting point is 00:14:16 went on to Portland, Maine, and then to Lowell, Massachusetts, but by now it was attracting only a handful of curiosity seekers, and by summer it was a sideshow at county fairs. Hull had kept up his pretense for three months, but the owners charged him with imposture, and they agreed to a compromise. Hull would go on to spend $10,000 and most of a decade on a second fake giant, memorably called the Solid Muldoon, which was unearthed in Colorado in 1877. When that venture failed, Hull got out of the giant business. The Cardiff giant, now an orphan, wandered inscrutably through the U.S. for eight decades. It spent some years in a barn in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, then made an appearance at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo.

Starting point is 00:14:55 It spent 12 years in the den of a curiosity collector in Des Moines, Iowa, and in 1947 went to the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown, New York, where today it's displayed under a tent, just like the one at Stubb-Newell's Farm a century and a half ago. Most of the people who visited the statue in its heyday thought it was a petrified giant. Others saw it as a scandal, a curiosity, a joke, or a business opportunity. But most of them probably didn't think about it hard enough to reach any conclusion at all. Author Ken Fader visited the giant in its current home at Cooperstown. He said they had the giant in a tent with a sign outside saying,

Starting point is 00:15:28 World's Greatest Hoax, along with displays inside explaining it. A couple came in and walked around the giant. As they left, the wife turned to her husband and said, So is that real? And the husband shrugged and said, I guess so. We want to thank everyone who helps support our podcast.

Starting point is 00:15:58 It takes us many hours a week to put together this show, and we just wouldn't be able to keep doing it if it weren't for the donations and pledges we get. If you'd like to make a one-time donation to help us out, you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. And if you'd like to join our Patreon campaign and pledge a recurring donation to help keep us going, you can get access to our bonus content, where you can hear outtakes and extralateral thinking puzzles, find out what's going on behind the scenes of the show, and learn more about Sasha, our trusty feline mascot. You can check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the link in the show notes. And thanks again to everyone who helps us keep making the show. We really wouldn't be able to do this without you.

Starting point is 00:16:50 to do this without you. In episode 203, Greg mentioned that he'd come across a reference to the town of Death Ball Rock, Oregon, being named to commemorate an unsuccessful attempt to make biscuits. Christy LaSalle wrote, Hi all, I'm a relative newcomer to your podcast and can't get enough. I'm catching up on old episodes. Right now, I'm listening to your Notes and Queries episode from June 2018, and the biscuit disaster in Death Ball, Oregon brought back a memory from childhood. Note, it does not involve baking. When I was a kid, my family took a trip to Alaska. Part of the trip was an 11-hour train ride from coastal Alaska to Anchorage. 11-hour train rides are, shall we say, not easy with small children. So one of the train conductors sat with us to give my parents a break and taught

Starting point is 00:17:30 us all about the parts of Alaska we were passing. We saw a Cold War era radar that could pick up anything the size of a beach ball or larger that went more than eight feet off the ground in Alaska. We saw the building specially built by the University of Alaska to study permafrost that was sinking into the permafrost. And we learned about the tiny town of Chicken, Alaska. The town arose as a gold mining town. The area was overrun by ptarmigans, the P is silent, the state bird of Alaska. The miners wanted to name the town Ptarmigan, but after a few days of trying, no one could figure out how to spell Ptarmigan, so eventually they just went with Chicken, Alaska. Love the podcast.

Starting point is 00:18:11 According to the website for the town of Chicken, the community was founded after gold was discovered in a creek in 1886, and Christy wasn't kidding about it being tiny. The site says that at its peak, the town's population was about 400. It now ranges from 50 in the summer to 6 in the winter. The site does note the story of the town's people choosing the name chicken after not being able to agree on how to spell ptarmigan, which does start with a rather uncommon silent p, I guess in the manner of pterodactyl, though from what I could find on it, it seems that the P-T spelling of ptarmigan is more of a pseudo-Greek affectation

Starting point is 00:18:48 that was given to a Scottish Gaelic word. Wow, that's interesting in itself. I did find some other sources that also back up the story of the town's name, and if anyone wants to go visit Chicken for themselves, whether because you want to say you've been to Chicken, Alaska, or to see a town that describes itself as a living museum of gold rush and Alaskan frontier history, or to see its giant metal chicken sculpture, you should note that the only highway into the town

Starting point is 00:19:17 is not maintained from mid-October to mid-March, so plan accordingly. Chicken, Alaska sounds like a terrible dessert. I thought about that. Charlie LaPlante sent a follow-up to the puzzle in episode 230. Spoiler alert. Hello, Greg, Sharon, and Sasha. Listening to episode 230's puzzle about the University of Alabama's visitor locker room named for James Fail reminded me of the visitor's locker room at Kinnick Stadium at the University of Iowa. Longtime Iowa football coach Hayden Fry had the visitor's locker room painted pink back in the 1970s, and it remains pink to this day. Fry had a graduate degree in psychology, and he claimed to have read that pink was shown to have a calming effect on people.

Starting point is 00:20:01 So he had the locker room painted pink to help put the visitors in a calm state of mind before games, counteracting the visiting team's efforts to get amped up. Of course, plenty of people say that's a ruse, and the real motivation was to insult the opposing team by making their locker room a traditionally feminine color. But the official legend is that Fry used his psychology degree to psych out the other team. Love listening every week. Fry used his psychology degree to psych out the other team. Love listening every week. When I went to look into Charlie's email, I was surprised to discover how many articles have been written about this pink locker room. Fry had the walls of it painted pink when he started coaching football at the University of Iowa in 1979, and they remained pink when he retired in 1998. During an update of the stadium in 2005, the whole locker room was turned pink,

Starting point is 00:20:48 including the lockers, floors, ceilings, showers, sinks, and even urinals. The story is frequently repeated that Fry claimed that he had chosen pink because it was a calming color. I couldn't remember having previously heard that about pink, so I was dubious myself. But it turns out that there is a shade of pink called Baker-Miller pink or Schoss pink or P618 that has been claimed to reduce violent or aggressive behavior. The things I learn on this job. Alexander Schoss was researching the physical and emotional effects produced by different colors when he discovered a shade of pink that he said reliably lowered heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration. In 1979, Shoss managed to convince

Starting point is 00:21:31 two military officers, CWO Baker and Commander Miller, at the U.S. Naval Correctional Center in Seattle to paint one of the admission cells at the center what Shoss came to call Baker-Miller pink in order to see if this would have a beneficial effect on the newly admitted inmates. In a 1985 article, Shoss stated that it had such a striking effect in reducing hostile and violent behavior that the Navy was highly impressed, and the cell was thus still pink. And he described several other quite dramatic success stories in various institutions using rooms painted this shade of pink, for example, to calm down highly aggressive or agitated youths in the criminal justice system

Starting point is 00:22:11 with psychiatric patients, and even to help reduce appetite in weight loss clinics. He reported pronounced effects within 10 to 15 minutes spent in a small pink room, with the effects sometimes lasting for considerable periods of time afterwards. That's, why in the world would that be? I mean, assuming that's true, why would a certain shade of pink calm you down? He claimed that it had these neuroendocrine effects, that it was actually physically affecting your endocrine system. Really?

Starting point is 00:22:37 So it was just calming down your excitability. That's amazing if it's true. He reported several very dramatic incidents, but they weren't adequately maybe controlled. And it's dramatic anecdotes mostly. But on the basis of these early promising examples, a number of institutions in various countries adopted the use of Baker Miller Pink for seclusion or detention rooms. It's been reported that in Switzerland, for example, about one-fifth of prisons and police stations have at least one

Starting point is 00:23:09 pink detention cell. But subsequent research has not always supported the purported effects of Baker Miller Pink, and some have criticized potentially weak methodologies used in the early studies. So I don't have the final word on what effects the color might have, but it does still have its advocates. For example, in 2017, the model Kendall Jenner made some news when she painted a room in her house that color and posted, Baker Miller Pink is the only color scientifically proven to calm you and suppress your appetite. Now I want to do it. Can we do it? We can do it. We'll see if it calms down Sasha. In any case, all this does help explain the prevalent story that Fry was using pink to sedate opposing teams. However, I will point out that it's very unlikely that Fry would have known about Strauss's research on pink at the time,

Starting point is 00:23:58 as it was just getting going around the time that Fry had the locker room painted. So why did he paint the room pink? While being interviewed about it for a 2014 article in the Des Moines Register, Fry said, Everyone thought it was because I had my master's in psychology and pink was a cool, calm color and this and that, which it was to me. But when I got here, things were so deteriorated and down. Howard Sissel, my defensive ends and linebacker coach,

Starting point is 00:24:23 he was in charge of helping me fix up things. The only color of paint they could find was pink. A 2017 article in the Pennsylvania newspaper The Morning Call said of the story that Fry had used the color to have a calming effect. Current Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz called the story fun, if not entirely correct. He attributed the color choice to a facilities manager who bought pink paint from the campus warehouse supply store because it was the cheapest available. That sounds like how these things often work. I wonder if the causation goes the other direction,

Starting point is 00:24:56 like if it's not that the research inspired the locker room, maybe the locker room story just got about and that maybe inspired the research into whether there was anything to it? No, I think Shoss was already working on this at about the same time independently. So it was just kind of a coincidence. Yeah, and these were kind of, you know, pre-internet days, so it wouldn't have been easy for people in two very different parts of the country to really know about these little things. Yeah. It seems likely that the story of Fry using pink because it was physiologically calming

Starting point is 00:25:25 is more of a post hoc explanation. And it's quite possible that the stories about paint availability or cost are also more current explanations that are being offered retrospectively. An article on Inside Higher Ed reports that in his 1999 autobiography, Fry wrote of the pink locker room, it's a passive color and we hoped it would put our opponents in a passive mood. Also, pink is often found in girls' bedrooms and because of that, some consider it a sissy color. It's this last explanation that some suspect to be the real truth and that has caused a certain amount of protest that the use of the color in the locker

Starting point is 00:26:01 room promotes homophobic or sexist stereotyping. And incidentally, if that was the thinking that pink would upset the visiting team because pink is for girls, then it's a little ironic because actually at one time, pink was seen as being a boy's color. The Inside Higher Ed article quotes a 1918 issue of Earnshaw's

Starting point is 00:26:20 that stated that the generally accepted rule is pink for the boys and blue for the girls. So it seems that associating colors with genders is pretty arbitrary. Whether other teams' coaches feared that the color would physically subdue their players or mess with them psychologically, some of them do have significant reactions to the locker room. According to an article in Sports Illustrated, in his autobiography, Fry said, When I talk to an opposing coach before a game and he mentions the pink walls, I know I've got him. I can't recall a coach who has stirred up a fuss about the color and then beat us.

Starting point is 00:26:55 Other coaches have sometimes tried to reduce the effects of the locker room. Former University of Michigan head coach Bo Schembechler supposedly hated the room and used to cover the walls with white butcher paper so his players wouldn't see the pink. Apparently, Schembechler's record was 2-2-1 against Fry when playing at Kinnick Stadium, as compared to his 4-0 record at Kinnick before Fry was hired and turned the walls pink. I also found an article from 2016 in the Detroit Free Press about how the current UM coach, Jim Harbaugh, had his staff spend considerable time completely papering the room and the lockers

Starting point is 00:27:31 with custom UM wallpaper and enormous photos of the UM team before a game there. They posted videos to social media showing how they had really transformed the room, but I guess Fry's rule still held that if a coach makes a fuss about the pink, then they would lose, because when I looked up the results of the game, UM had lost. Wow. While reading articles on this topic, I saw that some other teams have also experimented with having a pink locker room for the visiting team, including Norwich City and English Football Club, which painted their away dressing room pink this past summer. I tried to look into

Starting point is 00:28:05 whether this decorating change has helped them, and from what I saw, it does look like Norwich City is winning a much higher percentage of their games this season than they did last season. And although they seem to be having a better season for both their home and away games, it looked to me like there was even more improvement in their home game stats. So, possibly a win for the pink. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We learn the most amazing things from our listeners. If you have any feedback, follow-ups, or other comments for us,

Starting point is 00:28:36 please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an interesting sounding situation and he has to try to work out what is actually going on, asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Neil deCarteret and his kitty Nala. All right. A vet gives an animal a treatment, which would be really painful if the animal didn't actually need the treatment.

Starting point is 00:29:09 Does this happen to Nala? No. Okay. A vet gives an animal a treatment that would be painful... If the animal didn't actually need the treatment. need the treatment. So, the fact that the animal has some condition

Starting point is 00:29:27 makes him or her less susceptible to pain, I guess? I don't know how to... Okay, would it help me to know the specifics here, like what kind of animal it is? I guess it would.

Starting point is 00:29:37 Yes, I mean, that might be hard to guess. It might be easier to, I mean, sort of put together other things, but... Okay. I'm not sure. Would it help me to know

Starting point is 00:29:44 what the treatment... Obviously, it would. But that help me to know what the treatment, obviously it would, but that's going to be hard to guess too? Yeah. All right, is the basic principle here, you said it would be painful? Yes. All right, so when the treatment is given, is the animal conscious? Yes. But doesn't feel as much pain as it would without the condition it has?

Starting point is 00:30:04 That's incorrect. Okay. If this animal didn't have the condition that's being treated, it would be in some pain. Right? Isn't that what you're saying? That's while the treatment is being administered? This is all very abstract. Yeah, that's not exactly what I'm saying.

Starting point is 00:30:23 Okay. Okay. The animal, but what I'm saying. Okay. Okay. The animal, but you're saying that, okay, so an animal goes through some veterinary treatment for some condition. Yes. Right? I will agree to that. Does it feel any pain when that happens? Hopefully not.

Starting point is 00:30:39 Not at all? Possibly? Possibly not. Hopefully not. But if it didn't have this condition, then it would feel pain. Not at all. Possibly. Possibly not. Hopefully not. But if it didn't have this condition, then it would feel pain. I won't agree to that. Okay.

Starting point is 00:31:02 So let's say the animal, let's say there's just a misdiagnosis and this animal doesn't actually have the condition that the vet thinks it does. It's just totally healthy, whatever it is. Frog. Unlikely. have the condition that the vet thinks it does. It's just totally healthy, whatever it is. Frog. Unlikely. Is the condition death? No. No. All right.

Starting point is 00:31:14 Unlikely. Okay. Let's not go down that path. The vet thinks she's treating a condition. Yes. In an animal. Yes. Yes. In an animal. Yes. And um

Starting point is 00:31:29 And you're saying it's unlikely she'd be wrong about that. It's unlikely she'd be wrong about it. Yes. But the animal would feel. Okay. Let's say she did though. Let's say she is wrong and the animal doesn't need, doesn't have the condition whatever it is. Okay. I think you're saying I thought you were saying that the animal would feel... Okay, let's say she did, though. Let's say she is wrong and the animal doesn't have the condition, whatever it is. Okay. I think you're saying, I thought you were saying,

Starting point is 00:31:48 that the animal would feel pain in that case. No. Would feel more pain than it does. I'm not saying that. Can you read Nils? A vet gives an animal a treatment which would be really painful if the animal didn't actually need the treatment. Remember, this is a lateral thinking puzzle. Is the pain the vet's pain?

Starting point is 00:32:07 Yes. Oh, okay. I know it's not making any sense. So the vet would feel like emotional pain? No. Oh, there's more to it. I thought I had it. No. Like you wouldn't want to know that you had performed surgery on an animal that didn't need it. Right, right. But that's not it. No, the vet would feel actual pain. The vet would feel physical pain.

Starting point is 00:32:30 Yes. Administering this treatment to an animal that doesn't need it. If the animal didn't need it. Okay, and that explains why there'd be maybe zero pain if the animal did need it, because you wouldn't... Well, no, I'm still thinking of emotional pain. Yeah. Physical pain. physical pain physical pain um and i'll tell you now it's a hedgehog

Starting point is 00:32:51 so is it the spines on the hedgehog that caused the pain yes so it's it's a hedgehog that has lost his spines so neil says yeah it would be painful for the vet the poor little hedgehog that has lost his spines. So Neil says, yeah, it would be painful for the vet. The poor little hedgehog has lost his spines and is being given massages to help him de-stress and grow them back. Presumably at some point the pet therapy will be successful enough that they'll have to stop. And Neil sent a link to a story from the BBC that shows a very pathetic looking hedgehog that's been nicknamed Bear. Wildlife rescue workers think that Bear lost his spines due to the stress of a terrible ear mite infection. The story says Bear will be having daily stress relief massages with creams and a weekly bath to try and treat his skin and encourage his spines

Starting point is 00:33:36 to grow back. Wow, I didn't even know that happened. So thanks to Nala and Neil and our best wishes to Bear and his recovery. If anyone else or their pets have a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Just a reminder that we'll be off next week. In the meantime, if you're looking for more Futility Closet, you can check out the website at futilitycloset.com, where you can graze through Greg's collection of over 10,000 quirky curiosities, browse the Futility Closet.com, where you can graze through Greg's collection of over 10,000 quirky curiosities. Browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the podcast, with links and references for the topics we've covered. At the website, you can also find a support us section with a donate button and a link to our

Starting point is 00:34:19 Patreon page, which you can also find at patreon.com slash futilitycloset. We would really appreciate your support. And if you become a patron, you can spend next week catching up on all our bonus content. If you have any comments or feedback for us, please email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by the amazing Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back in two weeks.

Futility Closet - 242-The Cardiff Giant

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